


burn your biographies, rewrite your histories

by defcontwo



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Pre-New 52, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-27 16:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15689586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: Bruce is dead, Robin is running the city single-handed, and Jason gets an invitation to come home that he didn't expect.





	burn your biographies, rewrite your histories

**Author's Note:**

> This plays very fast and loose with canon, like -- just assume that everything I do is AU after Tim busts Jason out of jail and also, Infinite Crisis, what? Battle for the Cowl, what? 
> 
> Also, Fabian Nicieza is a punk and can feel free to meet me in a back alley with a baseball bat. This shit is AU af and in the immortal words of Beyonce, I ain’t sorry.

Bruce is dead. 

That’s the one singular thought that’s been circling Jason’s brain for the past two weeks straight. Bruce is dead and Dick took off for Blüdhaven with Talia’s brat in tow, and Cain is somewhere, elsewhere, and now it’s just Drake, all alone with Gotham and his ex-girlfriend and his dead mentor’s ghost. 

Jason leans into the doorway of his latest safehouse, and takes in the scattered books and guns and gear strewed across the floor. The walls are bare and white and the couch is second-hand; he picked it up off the sidewalk from a moving sale a couple of blocks over. 

The only thing that’s personal in the whole fucking place is a Santa Muerte votive candle that he picked up a couple of months ago because he thought it was pretty funny, all things considering. 

He hasn’t even fucking lit it yet. 

It’s a Tuesday and Bruce is dead. 

The Joker is too, four days ago from a simple bullet to the forehead, and Jason’s hands didn’t even shake, in the end, almost like he knew all along that it was going to have to come down to this. 

Bruce is gone, now, and Jason’s never gonna get that moment, the sigh of relief that lets him know that he’s safe, that lets him know that his father really does love him enough to finally put that fucking clown into the shallow grave that he’s always deserved. 

If Jason didn’t kill the Joker, there wouldn’t be anyone else around to do it. God knows the Joker was about five years past his expiration date. 

And it doesn’t matter because Bruce was never gonna do it, not even if he lived another fifty or sixty years, but it’s done all the same, and Jason -- Jason doesn’t know what’s left for him now. There’s an itch in the back of his mind that feels like Lazarus that’s telling him to take up a gun and a knife and get out on the streets, but it makes him a little nauseous, every time he thinks about actually going through with it. 

Jason’s not sure if that’s progress or not. 

So, he lights a cigarette, sits cross-legged on the floor, and starts putting his books into two different piles: books to pack and books to leave outside on the curb. _The Power and the Glory_ goes into the curb pile; _Our Man in Havana_ goes into the pile to get packed up. He’s self-aware enough to realize that his life is more of a farce than a tragedy, these days, and he doesn’t want to kid himself about it anymore. 

He could go anywhere. Could go back to Europe, or China or Japan, or maybe he could finally track down Catherine’s family in Monterrey. 

It’ll be good to get out of Gotham, for a while. Hell, who knows. It could even be for good, this time. 

A small piece of ash falls off the end of his cigarette and onto the title page of _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,_ and Jason brushes it away, idly, while reaching for a gun and pointing it in the direction of his kitchen window. “What do you want, Drake?” 

Drake drops from the kitchen window to the kitchen floor lightly, rubber soles squeaking only a little bit onto the linoleum tile. Converse, instead of boots. He didn’t think this kid was stupid enough to show up without any armor, but Jason looks up, and there he is: Tim Drake wearing torn jeans and a Gotham Knights tee, not a single weapon in sight, and both of his hands raised in the air. 

Drake just stares, impassively, like he doesn’t even see the gun. “I want you to give me ten minutes, Jason.” 

Jason makes a small, humphing sound, and flicks his gun’s safety from off to on. He doesn’t mind Drake as much he pretends to -- not anymore, anyways. God knows that the kid has enough bad shit in his life, lately. Hating him was starting to feel a little more cruel than Jason was comfortable with. 

“You’ve got five minutes, kid,” Jason says, and drops his gun at his side. 

Drake’s stare flattens into something tight and annoyed, and he frowns, deeply. “You’re barely two years older than me, Jason. Call me kid one more time and I might have to kick you in the balls or something.” 

Jason huffs, but he has to admit -- Drake does have a point. The man who stands before him is a lot older than the Robin that he chased after in Titans Tower a whole lifetime ago. Back when Drake carried himself with a lightness that he can’t even fake anymore. Back when Jason was half-mad with Lazarus rage and all he saw was a boy in a suit that used to be his. 

But looking at Drake now, Jason doesn’t see that boy anymore. Jason doesn’t know if it’s the grief, because it has to be grief that’s written those signs of a perpetual frown into Drake’s young face, or the black circles deepening beneath Drake’s eyes, but he might as well be a different person entirely. 

It’s probably not healthy, how that makes Jason like him more. 

Jason leans back into the sofa, and raises both eyebrows. “Okay, _Drake_. What do you want?” 

Drake drops his hands, and takes a few steps forward. “I, uh. I want you to come home. To the Manor.” 

Jason casts a sideways look at his gun on the couch, and reconsiders, just for a second, whether or not it would be worth it to shoot at Drake. “Why the fuck would I want to do that?” 

Drake shifts, and stuff both hands into his jean pockets, hunching over. “Because Bruce is dead. And Dick is gone. And maybe…..maybe it’s time, you know. To start over.” 

Jason narrows his eyes. “And how many rules does this fresh start come with?” 

“Just one,” Drake says, with a smile, as if any of this is funny at all. “No guns.” 

And isn’t that just typical. Bruce’s favorite protégé, the only one that he ever managed to craft in his image because the rest of them weren’t smart enough or bug-crazy paranoid enough or hell, even white enough, but Drake -- Drake really was perfect, in every single way, and now he wants to bring the big bad Red Hood back into the fold. 

Bring salvation to the family fuck up, the way Daddy Bats never could. It’s so fucking annoying, that Jason can’t seem to hate Drake as much as he wants to. 

Jason puts out his cigarette on the couch’s wooden armrest. It doesn’t matter, anyways, because he’s not going to be staying here much longer, one way or the other. “This what was in the message Bruce left for you? ‘Please, oh please, dear Timothy, could you take in my shitty criminal son and try to retrain him like a fucking dog?’”

Drake’s jawline clenches, just for a second, and it’s the only sign that Jason has to let him know how annoyed Drake is. Right now, he’ll take it as a victory. 

Drake levels Jason with a glare. “I’m not doing this for Bruce, Jason.” 

Drake seems like he’s probably a pretty good liar but right now, in this moment -- Jason looks and looks, and he can’t pick up any tells. “So who are you doing it for?” 

Drake shrugs, like he’s not bothered, and lifts up the latch on the kitchen window so that he can get back out. Drake’s got one foot out on the fire escape when he says, “I came here for Alfred,” and then he’s gone, before Jason can tell him to go fuck himself. 

“Go fuck yourself, Drake,” Jason says, to the empty space in his kitchen, and sighs. 

Jason rubs at one eye, tiredly, and lights himself another cigarette. 

 

. 

 

Here’s the thing. 

It’s manipulative as fuck. Drake knew it would be, that’s why he said it. Tim Drake and his big fucking brain, always thinking five or ten steps ahead. But here’s the really fucking annoying thing about it: he’s not wrong. 

Drake’s got his own reasons for wanting Jason back at the Manor, he’s sure, but at the core of it, Drake has a point. Because Alfred….Alfred just lost the man that he raised as his own son, and now he’s all alone in that big old house with no one but a prickly recently-orphaned eighteen-year-old Robin, and probably carrying the double weight of loss for the both of them. 

Alfred was always good about things like that. 

After Willis died, Alfred spent every night for a month straight with a cup of tea at Jason’s bedside, reading out chapters from Frankenstein -- even when Jason would get pissy about it and try to act like he was too old for that kind of thing. 

He wasn’t, of course. God, he doesn’t even think that he’d be too old for it now. Some days, he’d give anything to be young enough that a good book with Alfred would be enough to cheer him up. 

Jason wouldn’t even fucking consider Drake’s offer if Dick was around. But Dickie has a job and an apartment and a whole life in Blüdhaven, and it didn’t make any sense, for him to raise Bruce’s son and also start his whole life over from scratch. Babs had stuck up for Dick about it, had said that a small, homey Blüdhaven apartment on a cop’s salary isn’t exactly the first place the League of Assassins would go looking for Damian Wayne, but Jason knows that there’s something selfish in the way Dick took off, in how he couldn’t stand living in Bruce’s city without Bruce in it. 

But grief makes people selfish. Jason won’t hold this one against Dick. 

Jason looks at his packed bags stuffed full of books and clothes and gear. Everything that he owns, and it all fits easily into three duffle bags, crammed into the trunk of a beat-up bright red 1969 Camaro. 

It takes him less than a day to dismantle half his guns and toss them into the harbor. Takes him another day to find safe places to stash the rest of them, just in case. 

He’s got one knife tucked into his boot and two tucked into the lining of his leather jacket because Drake didn’t say a word about those, so as far as Jason’s concerned, they don’t count. 

Jason snorts, feeling vaguely disgusted with himself for being this soft, this easy. 

And then he slams the trunk door shut, gets into the driver’s seat, and heads for Wayne Manor. 

 

. 

 

“This is the _last bloody time_ , you vultures, ring this doorbell one more time and I’ll start calling the p -- oh. Master Jason.” 

The heavy oak front door to the Manor swings wide open, revealing Alfred, who suddenly looks a hell of a lot older than his seventy-five years, all worn and tired and grey. 

Jason shifts, awkwardly, and lets out a low whistle. “Woo, boy, Alf. That was some cursing. Do we need to go and wash your mouth out with soap?” 

Jason doesn’t get a response, just hears a small, quiet gasp and then he’s wrapped up in a hug that smells like lemon and laundry detergent, held together by careful, suit-clad arms that shake a little as they tighten around Jason’s waist. Jason drops the duffle that he was carrying to the ground and lifts his arms up, settling into the hug. It’s a funny thing, how much bigger he is than the last time that Alfred hugged him like this. He doesn’t think it’s something he’ll ever really get used to, that his body didn’t just hit pause at fifteen, that he died and got to come back and keep growing. 

Jason lets out a long, slow sigh. He could’ve come sooner, probably. 

Alfred steps back, and clears his throat. “It’s good to see you, Master Jason. Shall I go and make up your room?” 

“Sure, Alf,” Jason says, and hopes to whatever fucking saint might be listening in that ‘your room’ doesn’t mean ‘the same room that you slept in before you died.’ He picks up his bags and shoulders his way through the front door. “I’m not picky.” 

It is the same room, Jason finds, but it doesn’t look the same, not exactly. His bookshelves are still there and so are his posters on the wall -- the magazine pages that he’d torn out from ‘Car and Driver’ and a couple of photoshoots from Sports Illustrated that Jason can’t help but grimace at. He’ll have to take those down later. It’s not that he’s not into women because he is, sometimes, but he’s not fifteen anymore, he doesn’t have to go out of his fucking way to make sure that everyone knows it. 

Jason shifts his gaze away from the walls, to the bed. The sheets and blankets are brand new, and all done up in a bland, inoffensive dove grey color. The mattress doesn’t dip slightly in the center, not the way his old one used to from all of the times that he would jump on the bed. 

It’s his room, but it’s not. 

“Could’ve been worse,” Jason mutters to himself, and drops his bags to the floor. Leaning down, he digs the Santa Muerte candle out from an outer pocket on his duffle, and sets it carefully on the bedside table. The room smells like lemon and laundry detergent, just like Alfred, and Jason flops face first into the bed. 

This hasn’t started to feel like a bad idea, yet. 

But it doesn’t really feel like a good one, either. 

 

. 

 

He doesn’t see Drake until almost midnight, when he goes down into the Cave to get suited up for patrol. 

Which was on purpose, a little, because there’s a pretty big gap between ‘not hating Drake anymore’ and ‘voluntarily sharing living space,’ and he sure as fuck doesn’t want to see the smug look on Drake’s face when he realizes that his plan to get Jason back to the Manor worked like clockwork. 

Drake doesn’t look all that smug, though, sitting at Bruce’s mammoth computer console, with his Robin suit half-way undone, the top half gathered around his waist like an afterthought, like he’d gotten distracted in the middle of getting suited up. Which, judging from the coffee cups littering Bruce’s once pristine console and the way Drake’s hair has gotten long and unwieldy, with knotting on the side, is probably exactly what happened. He looks, well...like he shouldn’t have muscles that defined at 5’6” and eighteen years old, actually, but Jason shakes his head, and banishes that thought as quickly as it comes. Jesus Christ, that kind of thinking is the last thing he needs right now.

Drake looks focused. Looks like he belongs there, right in the middle of Bruce’s world, in a way that Jason knows he never did. 

Jason finds the place in his mind where the usual Bruce-replaced-me anger sits and prods at it, carefully, and finds that the only thing he can feel is a heavy sadness. Jason died and Bruce replaced him, and now Bruce is dead, and there’s no one around to replace Drake. 

Drake will probably wear that Robin suit until he dies in it, and then that’ll be it for their whole fucking species.

Christ, that’s sad as shit. 

“You gonna stand there all day, Jason?” Drake says, without looking away from the console. Quick fingers type rapidly across the keyboard, pulling up a case file. “I didn’t actually invite you here to stare at the naked ladies on your wall, you know.” 

Jason rolls his eyes. “I don’t know, Drake, are you gonna finish getting suited up or are you planning on giving Gotham’s finest a brand new floor show?” 

Drake looks down absently, and shrugs. “I got distracted.” 

“No shit,” Jason says, leaning up against the console, and reaching for the nearest cup of coffee that still looks like it’s got something in it and takes a sip. Black, no sugar, and no milk. “What the fuck, Drake, this is like drinking gasoline.” 

Drake looks up at him, a small, amused half-smirk flitting around the corner of his lips. “It tasted fine when I brewed it three days ago.” 

_Three days ago_ , Jason mouths to himself, incredulous. “Does Alfred know how gross you are?” 

“He hasn’t come down here….” Drake says, and then stops, turning thin-lipped and pale. “Uh, you know. He hasn’t been down here, since.” 

Which yeah, that makes sense. Jason looks around at the Cave through new eyes, and sees every place where Alfred’s presence should be. There’s dust accumulating on the file cabinets and the computer console, and a recent coffee stain that’s already dried into the concrete floor. Honestly, the small army of half-drunk coffee cups alone should’ve been the dead giveaway. 

Jason wonders if there’s anyone around bothering to remind Drake to sleep, and if that’s the reason for those deep circles underneath his eyes, but, well. He figures that there’s only so much Alfred can do on that front. 

And anyways, it’s not Jason’s problem. 

Jason shrugs his shoulders back, one hand going to where there’s a selection of knives tucked into a holster around his hip. “So, what’s the case?” 

“Falcone has gotten it into his head that since Batman has gone AWOL, he can just turn right around and start bringing shipments of coke laced with who-knows-what into Gotham from overseas,” Drake says, locking the computer console and uncurling from the heavy metal rolling chair in one smooth motion. “According to my very illegal wiretap, he fancies himself the next head of the Five Families, if he sells enough of it.” 

“How adorable,” Jason says, lips curling around a smirk. “I want to blow up his shipments and scare the shit out of his hired muscle.” 

“Come on, Hood,” Drake says, and he’s Robin now, fully suited up and domino in place, eyes blank and unseeing. Costume all done up in black and red, with bō at his side, but there’s a certain something in his stance, in the way humor flicks around the edges of his thin smile, like he’s laughing at a joke that only he knows the punchline to, and it’s just so Robin that Jason feels it like a punch to the gut. “Why do you think you’re here?” 

 

. 

 

So, their first night out, they beat the shit out of Falcone’s hired muscle and Jason rigs all of the shipments to blow. He even checks to make sure that there was no one inside any of the shipping containers before he did it and at the end of it, Drake makes him take a selfie with the explosions and sends it straight to Oracle. 

Then, it’s a whole week tracking down a Firefly copycat who keeps trying to burn down the ritzy glass and chrome high-rises in the Diamond District, and it’s Drake who figures out that it’s the shitty bored son of a local stock-trader, but it’s Jason who catches him off-guard and knocks him out from behind. 

A lot of messy crap has piled up without Batman around to take care of it and it’s a full three weeks before they can take enough of a breather to go on separate patrols, zig-zagging their way across the city and only crossing paths once that night, but even still, Drake’s in his ear the whole time, cracking jokes at the most unexpected moments. 

It’s fun, actually. 

Which is weird. Jason didn’t expect it to be fun, working with Drake. He’s always seemed so quiet and serious, but Jason guesses that’s what you get when you’re so out of your fucking skull with grief and rage that you threaten to kill someone a couple of times. They don’t exactly joke around with you much. 

But Drake jokes around a lot, as Robin. 

Drake quotes Wrath of Khan right before kicking a gangster in the teeth, and tosses his bō at Jason’s head when he doesn’t think that Jason is paying close enough attention. He comes up with the dumbest fucking names for the high-tech batarangs that he made for himself, like ‘the ninjarang’, and he doesn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed at what a giant fucking nerd he is. 

For someone who trades in lies and subterfuge, Drake appears to be so completely himself in the Robin suit, that it’s easy to get tripped up and think that Tim Drake is the real costume, and Robin was the truth all along. 

Maybe neither is true, but Jason kind of wants to stick around long enough to figure it out. 

And Jason doesn’t know what the fuck to do with that. 

. 

 

Jason’s body jerks itself awake; he shifts and groans into the darkness, blinking sleep-crusted eyes at the black ceiling above him. 

If he closes them again, he’ll be fifteen and bleeding to death in Ethiopia, and Bruce will be standing over him with a crowbar. If he closes them, he’ll be twenty and holding the muzzle of a handgun to Bruce’s forehead. 

He woke up before he could pull the trigger. Some nights, Jason wonders what would happen if he let himself sleep all the way through it. Will he stop having the same dream over and over again if he finally lets himself pull that trigger? 

Mostly, he just thinks that this is Bruce’s way of giving him crap from beyond the grave. 

He read once that dreaming about death was a sign of rebirth, that it signaled change and letting go of the past. But Jason’s been dreaming of death for years and years, ever since he crawled his way out of his own grave, and he hasn’t managed to let go of a single fucking thing yet. 

If this is supposed to be a sign of rebirth, he’d rather just stay dead, thanks. 

Jason blows out a breath, and grimaces at the ceiling. It would be so easy to just lie here and stew, to let his thoughts circle around and around again, until there’s nothing left but the bleakest, saddest fucking shit and it’s all he can do to keep his brain from eating itself alive. 

“Tea,” he mutters to himself, pushing the covers aside and swinging his legs over onto the floor. “Tea and maybe a couple of the scones that Alfred made for breakfast, and then you can read a book until you pass out or something.” 

The light is on in the kitchen when he goes downstairs, and when he pushes open the heavy swinging door, Drake is perched at the kitchen counter, with a sketchbook open in front of him and a mug of something steaming to his left. Drake sets his pencil down when Jason walks into the kitchen, and flips the sketchbook closed, but otherwise, doesn’t say anything. 

“Tell me that’s not coffee,” Jason says. 

“It’s cocoa,” Drake huffs, curling one hand around the edge of the mug and bringing it close to his chest. Drake gives him a look like he’s sizing Jason up, and Jason shifts awkwardly, suddenly too-mindful of his threadbare t-shirt and the deep bruise-like circles under his own eyes. Drake smiles wryly, but there’s no meanness to it when he says, knowingly, “you too, huh?” 

A year ago, he might’ve sneered at the idea that Boy Wonder Tim Drake knew anything about real nightmares. Now, Jason just shrugs. Drake’s track record speaks for itself. 

So does Jason’s. 

“Got anymore where that came from?” Jason says, jerking his head in the direction of Drake’s cocoa. 

“One more packet left in the box,” Drake says. He blinks sleepily, and takes another sip of his cocoa, but some of it misses, and spills down the front of his t-shirt. 

This is probably the most off his guard that Jason has ever seen him. Even back in the Cave on that first day, half-dressed and mainlining day-old coffee, Jason still knew that Drake could turn on a dime and be ready for a fight in the time it might’ve taken for Jason to throw a punch. 

But now, Drake looks like he could be any teenager in the world. And Jason...Jason doesn’t exactly feel like throwing any punches, right this second. 

Drake brushes at the spilled cocoa idly, and scrunches up his face, like he’s too tired to be as annoyed as he wants to be. “As long as you don’t narc on me to Alfred about keeping instant hot cocoa in his kitchen,” Drake says, finally, tipping himself forward in the chair. 

“You’re telling me he doesn’t know?” Jason asks. “It’s Alfred’s kitchen. He knows everything that goes on in this kitchen.” 

“There’s a hidden panel beneath one of the countertop tiles,” Drake says, as if that’s any kind of explanation. “If you want that last packet, you’re gonna have to find it yourself.” 

Jason sputters, a little. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, Drake.” 

Drake just shrugs, but his eyes are wider, and more awake, and he’s grinning, like this is his idea of a good time. 

What a little shit. Jason can’t believe that he was almost about to feel sorry for him. 

Jason weighs up dignity versus his desire for hot chocolate at 4 am, and in the end hot chocolate, and the appeal of not going straight back up to his room wins. 

Jason walks around the kitchen island, looking for irregularities, and running his hands across the smooth, cold tile as he goes. In a weird sort of way, it settles his mind, gives him something simple and direct to focus on. 

Minus the distracting weight of Drake’s gaze, which Jason feels on the back of his neck for the full minute and a half that it takes for him to figure out that the key to finding the hidden panel lies in a latch in the silverware door, and not under the kitchen sink like he first suspected. 

That part’s not so simple, because Jason’s not sure if he can remember the last time that he knew, without a sliver of doubt, that he had someone’s complete and undivided attention, let alone over something so small and unimportant. 

Jason plucks out the last bag of hot cocoa, leaving the empty box behind just to be an asshole, and straightens to shake the package in front of Drake’s face. “Happy now?” 

Drake just hums. “Minute and a half.” 

Jason frowns, and a prickle in the back of his mind, a reflexive ‘fuck you,’ rises to the surface. “What, too long?” 

“No, actually -- it took Dick three whole minutes and then he put the cocoa powder in his cereal bowl just to spite me,” Drake says, with that same small, satisfied look on his face, lips quirked in a barely-there smile and eyes giving nothing away. 

And that’s….that’s unexpected. Jason huffs a laugh. “So, I finally did something better than good ole Dickie Bird, huh? That’s gotta be a first.” 

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Drake says, and Jason — Jason would ask what Drake means by that, exactly, but he doesn’t think he wants to hear what Drake might say. 

So Jason turns away towards the stove, and gets the milk out of the fridge, and pulls a pot down from where they hang up on the wall, and starts heating up the milk and mixing in the cocoa powder. 

“You know, there’s a microwave right there,” Drake points out, like he’s stating the obvious. 

Jason just rolls his eyes, and doesn’t turn around. “You _would_ be the kind of guy who heats up milk in the microwave.” 

Drake squawks, and Jason laughs, sharp and loud in response. He thinks that maybe he’s starting to like this version of Drake out of the Robin suit, this version that’s just a little bit messy and undignified. Hell, maybe this is what Drake is like most of the time. 

It’s not like Jason would know; this is probably the longest amount of time they’ve spent together outside of their nightly patrols. 

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Drake says, at last, when Jason’s laughter subsides. 

Jason glances back at Drake over his shoulder, and smirks. “Not everything has to be efficient all of the time, is all.” 

“It’s just cocoa, Jason,” Tim says, exasperated. 

“And it tastes better like this,” Jason insists. “I’m making you have some of this.” 

“Ten bucks says it tastes exactly the same,” Drake mutters, mostly under his breath, but Jason reaches back to kick lightly at the legs of Drake’s chair. 

“Careful, rich boy, you say a thing like that and I’m definitely gonna have to hold you to it,” Jason says. 

Drake doesn’t answer, just grunts softly, so Jason ignores him in favor of pulling two fresh mugs down from the cabinet and portioning out the hot cocoa from the pot, taking one for himself and setting one down in front of Drake, before settling into the kitchen chair opposite him across the kitchen island. 

“Go on,” Jason says, nodding at Drake. “Try it. You’ll see.” 

He’s not sure why this matters so much, suddenly, but dusk is starting to make its presence known through the distant hallway windows, and that combined with the sheer fucking unlikeliness of the two of them being here at all lends the whole moment an air of surreality that’s Jason’s willing to ride through to the end. 

Drake picks up the hot cocoa that Jason made, and carefully, with no small amount of exaggeration, takes a sip and then shrugs, unconcerned. “Tastes the same to me.” 

“Bullshit,” Jason says, flatly, picking up the nearest pile of napkins, the closest projectile that he has at his disposal, and tossing them in Drake’s face. 

Drake puts both hands up to bat them away, but a few napkins still fall straight into both of his mugs of hot cocoa, which is how Jason knows that the both of them should definitely be asleep right now. 

“Alright, fine,” Drake admits. “It was a little better.” 

Jason just raises an eyebrow, and contemplates throwing another pile of napkins. The absurdity of the situation strikes him, again. On the list of things he’s ever thrown at Tim Drake, napkins fall pretty low on the ‘capable of injury and destruction’ scale. But here he is. Hanging out with his replacement over hot cocoa, making jokes. Laughing, like things in his life are easy. 

Jason takes another sip of his cocoa, but it goes down gritty and he swallows around his sudden unease. Whatever this is, right here, it’s something…..it’s something that could be good, or at least something that has the capacity to not be completely shitty, like everything else in Jason’s life. And it won’t last. Nothing like this ever does. 

Jason can’t help himself. It just comes out, easy as anything, like the worst of all his self-destructive, stupid fucking impulses. “I killed the Joker.” 

Drake sets his mug down with a soft clatter, and sighs. “I know.” 

“You -- you what?” Jason says. “No, you fucking didn’t. You don’t have to pretend like you know everything, Drake, for fuck’s sake.” 

“I don’t pretend like I -- “ Drake starts, and then stops, shaking his head with annoyance, too-long hair falling into his eyes. Drake pushes his hair out of his face, and stares Jason down with a little more determination than Jason would’ve expected. “Jason, I know. You broke into Arkham and you killed the Joker. Who do you think made sure that he got cremated ASAP before anyone had a chance to make off with his body?” 

Jason inhales sharply. He did wonder about that, about how quickly it all got taken care of, without a whole lot of fuss kicked up by the GCPD or the Arkham authorities. But, still. He knows exactly where Drake stands on this sort of thing. Something doesn’t connect. 

“So, I guess that whole no kill rule wasn’t retroactive,” Jason says, and god, he’s aware of how little fucking sense that makes. 

Drake blows out a breath. “Jason….I said no guns. I didn’t say anything about no killing.” 

Jason tightens his grip around his mug, and feels like he’s had the whole world pulled out from under him. “What the fuck, Drake.” 

“I….look, Jason,” Drake says, and he leans forward, dropping his voice to a near whisper, like he thinks Bruce could somehow still hear him from the afterlife. “I don’t exactly, uh. Fully agree with Bruce. About that. I….I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I think we should make ourselves judge, jury, and executioner. Because I don’t. I never will. But….you’re also not going to see me crying into my pillow because the Joker isn’t in the world anymore. I think….in the right circumstances, there can be exceptions. That’s all.”

Jason releases his death grip on his mug of cocoa, and eases open his fist, stretching it open and closed, open and closed. This is about the last conversation that he expected to be having tonight. “So, why the no guns rule?” 

Drake wrinkles his nose. “Guns make it too easy for you. Killing shouldn’t _be_ easy.” 

Which, huh. That makes more sense than it doesn’t. Jason looks at Drake, at his replacement, and realizes for the first time that maybe….maybe they have a little more in common than they don’t, actually. 

“And anyways,” Drake says, a little too quickly, “I tried and failed to kill Captain Boomerang, so who am I to judge.” 

“You -- what?” Jason feels like he’s been saying that a lot tonight. Maybe Drake’s not the only one who is a little more off his guard than usual, here. 

“Captain Boomerang,” Drake repeats. “The….he killed my father. And I….I wanted to kill him. I had a plan and everything. It was airtight. I would’ve gotten away with it, too, but in the end, I couldn’t do it. I hesitated and I wish I could tell you that I was relieved or...or happy, that I didn’t wind up doing it. But I’m not, so.” 

Drake gives a thin little shrug, like it’s nothing, but his eyes are bright and his knuckles have gone white, wrapped tight around his mug. Jason wonders if he’s told anyone else about this. Probably not, all things considered. 

Jesus Christ. Bruce really did a number on this kid. And….and he’s not a kid, god, he’s really not, but looking at Drake now, he can see how the shape of Drake’s entire adolescence was defined by Batman and Robin and the code, and now at the end of it, all he’s left with are questions. 

No wonder he can’t fucking sleep. 

Jason swallows hard, and tries to find something, anything, to say. “Look, Drake -- “ 

“Jason,” Drake interrupts. “I confessed to attempted homicide. I think you can call me by my first name.” 

Jason tests it out, rolls the name around in his head. _Tim_. This is starting to feel a little, well...a little too much like cracking himself open and digging around to see what comes out. He can’t remember the last time someone confided in him about anything. Can’t remember the last time that he did the same. 

If he stays in this kitchen for much longer, he’s not sure what else might come out. 

Jason taps his fingers on the kitchen counter, once, twice, and tries to rein in a little of the emotional whiplash. “Okay, Tim. I think….I think that we’re a pair of sad assholes who should probably try going back to bed.” 

Tim smiles weakly. He runs his index finger along the spine of his sketchbook, and shrugs. “I think I’m gonna hang out here for a little while longer, actually. But one of us should probably try to not look like night of the living dead.” 

“And I don’t want to hear any more death jokes,” Tim says, holding up a hand before Jason can open up his mouth and say a single word. 

Jason just shakes his head, but he’s too tired for any kind of a comeback. Exhaustion crept up on him, all at once, and now he can feel it all over, from the top of his head to the heavy weight of his feet planted firmly on the marble floor.

Jason yawns, and fails to cover it. “Alright, Boy Wonder, I’m gonna go hit the hay. Try not to plot any more murders while I’m passed out, alright?” 

“Jesus, _Jason,_ ,” Tim says, groaning. 

“If you can’t get over it,” Jason says, holding up one finger, “then make shitty inappropriate jokes about it until it makes everyone else as uncomfortable as you are.” 

“Good _night,_ Jason,” Tim says, as he lets his head fall to one side, propped onto his left hand, while his right hand reaches for his pencil and sketchbook. 

“‘Night, Tim,” Jason says, as he lets the kitchen door close behind him with a soft swish, but not before he catches Tim leaning across the kitchen island to snag Jason’s mug of stovetop hot cocoa for himself. 

Jason turns away towards the staircase, grinning. 

It takes him another hour to fall asleep but when he finally does, the nightmares don’t come.


End file.
